RAGBRAI 2022 Host Towns: How We Booked Hotels For Each Night

Shae flew out to Des Moines, IA last week to attend the route announcement event for RAGBRAI 2022.

In case you’re not familiar with RAGBRAI, it’s an annual event where ~15,000 people cycle from the western side of Iowa to the eastern side. Shae heard about it last year and signed up for the 2022 race, so check out this post to learn even more about that.

The route across Iowa is different each year. That means there are different host towns for each night every year, so we wouldn’t know until January 28 which towns those would be. Seeing as Iowa is hardly the most densely populated state, we knew there would be a limited number of hotel rooms and Airbnbs available along whichever route was announced.

That meant it would be important to get accommodation booked as soon as possible, not only because rooms would get booked up quickly but because prices could get jacked up quickly once hotels and Airbnbs knew there’d be high demand despite many riders choosing to camp each night along the route.

Thankfully I was able to jump on this as soon as the route was announced and even got some great deals on accommodation. Here’s a list of the host towns for RAGBRAI 2022 and how we booked our hotels for each night.

RAGBRAI 2022 Host Towns

RAGBRAI 2022 officially starts on July 23, although the cycling itself doesn’t begin until the following day. Cyclists dip their back tire in the Missouri River at the start of the race and dip their front tire in the Mississippi River at the end of the race.

Here are the host towns for each night:

• July 23 – Sergeant Bluff (population 5,015)
• July 24 – Ida Grove (population 2,051)
• July 25 – Pocahontas (population 1,867)
• July 26 – Emmetsburg (population 3,706)
• July 27 – Mason City (population 27,338)
• July 28 – Charles City (population 7,396)
• July 29 – West Union (population 2,490)
• July 30 – Lansing (population 968)

As you can see, six of the eight towns/cities along the 2022 RAGBRAI route have ~5,000 or fewer people living there. That meant it was of even greater importance that we book our accommodation quickly as hotels along the route would be even more limited than I was expecting.

My RAGBRAI Involvement

I’ll be driving along the route each day, meeting up with Shae for lunch and dinner. On the first night (Sergeant Bluff) and penultimate night (West Union), Shae will be camping and so I’ll get to the camping location before her to set up her tent and will pack up her tent the following mornings. The other nights she’ll be staying in hotels with me.

Hotel Booking Preparation

A factor that would make booking hotels and Airbnbs even harder is that I’ll have our dog Truffles with me. Finding pet-friendly accommodation would limit how many properties we’d be able to stay at. It would also increase our cost seeing as we’d have to pay a pet fee for each night/stay.

Before the Host Towns announcement event, I did some preliminary research. I checked the websites for IHG, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt to identify pet-friendly hotels in Iowa. I then created a list of all those hotels, noting both the pet fee and parking fee where applicable seeing as some of those were downtown hotels that charge for parking.

The reason I did this was because once the host towns were announced, I’d want to book properties quickly. Not having to search for their specific pet policies could potentially save vital minutes.

It could also save a lot of money by instantly rejecting certain hotels based on their fees. For example, the Springhill Suites Ames (a Marriott brand) offers free parking but charges a $150 pet fee per stay. That wouldn’t be so bad for a stay of a week or more, but for a one or two night stay that’s excessively expensive. The TownePlace Suites Ames (another Marriott brand) on the other hand would only charge $35 per night – much more reasonable for our particular circumstances.

With Des Moines being a larger city, there were a lot more pet-friendly options. Doing this research ahead of time meant I knew I should ignore the Residence Inn Des Moines Downtown seeing as they charged both $15 per night for parking and a $100 pet fee. There were several other hotels in the area that offer free parking and only charge a $25 pet fee, so those would be far better choices for a one or two night stay.

While this preliminary research was a good idea, it counted for naught. Most of the RAGBRAI host towns ended up not being near any of the hotels I’d identified ahead of time.

RAGBRAI Route Confusion

Fast forward to the RAGBRAI route announcement on January 28. Shae was in the event hall for the announcement, while I was watching the livestream of the announcement which seemed to be on a ~15 second delay.

Just before they revealed all the host towns, they mentioned that the cities wouldn’t be announced in order from west to east. I missed that part, so I was really confused when the first town announced was Emmetsburg. The second town was Mason City which is to the east of Emmetsburg, with the third town announced being Ida Grove back to the west.

It was at this point that I realized they weren’t announcing the towns in order. Here’s the order the cities were announced in:

a) Emmetsburg
b) Mason City
c) Ida Grove
d) West Union
e) Pocahontas
f) Sergeant Bluff
g) Charles City
h) Lansing

If that had been the actual route, here’s how back and forth it would’ve been:

To try to work out what the actual route would be before they confirmed it on the livestream, I pulled up Google Maps and set it up to get directions from one town to the next. By dragging around the city order, I quickly worked out that this would be the route for RAGBRAI 2022:

The route itself will be slightly different as they’ll likely take some back roads rather than always being on highways. The organizers also specifically set up the route so that on one day the cyclists cover 100+ miles which means one of these sections will become elongated.

How I Booked Hotels For RAGBRAI

Now that I knew which towns the race would be stopping in overnight and on which nights, it was time to hustle and get our hotels booked.

Sergeant Bluff

Although Sergeant Bluff has a population of only ~5,000 people, it’s close to the larger city of Sioux City giving us more accommodation options. I therefore skipped that initially and moved on to Ida Grove.

Ida Grove

There weren’t any pet-friendly hotels or Airbnbs in Ida Grove, although there were a couple of Airbnbs 30-45 minutes south of there. The thing is, Ida Grove is only an hour from Sergeant Bluff. I therefore figured the worst case scenario was that I could add an additional night to wherever I’d subsequently book in Sergeant Bluff and drive back there on the Ida Grove night.

That meant my planning skipped to the next city (well, next two cities).

Pocahontas & Emmetsburg

Pocahontas has fewer than 2,000 people living there, so that was another location with no hotel options for us. Thankfully the city after that was Emmetsburg and that was only ~30 minutes north of Pocahontas.

With those two cities being relatively close and Emmetsburg having hotels available, I booked a couple of nights at a hotel in Emmetsburg. That cost $79.74 per night and has a pet fee of $15 per night. That’s a fair price for a hotel in rural Iowa normally, but even better considering how much it likely would’ve cost if the hotel knew in advance that it was along the RAGBRAI route.

I’m glad I booked that hotel within ~30 minutes of the route announcement because the hotel is now completely sold out for those dates. In fact, all pet-friendly hotels in Emmetsburg are now sold out, so if I’d waited I’d have been looking at a much longer drive to some kind of accommodation.

Mason City & Charles City

Two nights down, six to go. I was able to knock out two more cities with my next hotel reservation.

The next city on the 2022 RAGBRAI route after Emmetsburg is Mason City. The night after that the riders will be stopping in Charles City which is only ~30 miles further. Rather than trying to book a different hotel for each of those nights, their proximity meant it made sense to try to book the same hotel or Airbnb for both nights.

25 minutes to the north of Mason City is the city of Northwood. Northwood is also only a 1 hour drive from Mason City, thus making it a good option to stay at for two nights. Although Northwood has a population of only 2,072, they do have a pet-friendly Holiday Inn Express.

Even better, it was bookable for a decent number of IHG Rewards points. They had a king suite bookable for only 16,000 points per night; I have an IHG Select credit card which gives a 10% points rebate on award stays, so our net cost will be 14,400 points per night. The Holiday Inn Express Northwood only charges a $25 pet fee per stay rather than per night, so that was fantastic too.

The hotel no longer has any rooms bookable with points for those dates, but they still have rooms bookable for only $109 per night before tax which is very reasonable considering it’s not a long drive from Mason City and Charles City.

West Union

The penultimate night of RAGBRAI will be spent in West Union. What I hadn’t realized at the time was that West Union is where Shae is planning on camping for the second time on the race – I thought she was going to be camping in Lansing.

Once again, there weren’t any accommodation options for us in West Union, so I had to look a little further afield. Just over 30 minutes north of West Union is Decorah which had a pet-friendly hotel. I can’t remember what the cash price was when I booked it, but I think it was going for something like $150 for the night.

It was a Wyndham Rewards property (Super 8), so I booked it as an award stay instead. It was 15,000 points, but the Wyndham Business Earner credit card I have gives a 10% instant discount on award stays, so that cost 13,500 points for the night, with a pet fee of only $15 for that night. That hotel is now fully booked, so I was initially glad I made a reservation when I did.

However, I’ve subsequently changed plans due to where we’ll be staying after the race ends (more about that in a moment).

Back to Sergeant Bluff & Ida Grove

Now that I had our hotels booked for most of RAGBRAI, it was time to take another look at where we’d be staying for the first couple of nights. As mentioned earlier, Sergeant Bluff is near the larger city of Sioux City, so I figured our only accommodation options would be found there.

However, I found a great-looking three bedroom house on Airbnb in Sergeant Bluff that was only something like $50 per night including fees. That was ridiculously cheap but had great reviews, so I booked it immediately.

Unfortunately a couple of hours later I received an email from Airbnb advising that I’d been refunded for the stay. The host hadn’t gotten in contact, but I figured they’d realized they could get away with charging far more with RAGBRAI in town. I returned to Airbnb to find an alternative and was surprised to find that same property bookable again. Thinking that perhaps it was an Airbnb glitch that resulted in the cancelled stay, I booked that same property again. Unfortunately I received another refund notification in the morning, so that was presumably initiated by the host and so I gave up trying to book their house.

Marriott was our next best option. They have three pet-friendly properties in Sioux City, all of which have free parking. Marriott offers a 5th night free for every four you book using points, so I booked a five night stay so that we can get to the city before everyone else descends on the area.

West Union (again) & Lansing

After booking hotels for nearly the entirety of RAGBRAI, all that was left was to book somewhere to stay on the final night. I’d assumed that cyclists stick around on the final night to celebrate the completion of the race, but apparently everyone heads straight home.

As a result, we didn’t need to find somewhere to stay in Lansing itself. We’re due to head on to Chicago after RAGBRAI because Shae and her mom have tickets to see Elton John there on August 5. That means we’d want to head in that general direction, but ideally not have too long of a drive on the final day of RAGBRAI as Shae will probably be keen to just relax and rest her legs after cycling across Iowa.

While investigating our accommodation options, I noticed a couple of pet-friendly hotels in Prairie du Chien just across the border in Wisconsin. That’s only a 40 minute drive from the race’s ending in Lansing, so that seemed to be a good option rather than driving north to La Crosse, WI only to have to drive back down to get to Chicago.

Even better, Prairie du Chien is only a 50 minute drive from West Union, the host town for the penultimate night of the ride.

As a result, I decided to cancel the hotel I’d booked in Decorah for that West Union night and booked a longer stay in Prairie du Chien. That’s at a Country Inn & Suites which is part of the Radisson Rewards Americas program. I booked that with points seeing as it’s only 30,000 points per night (their second lowest category). It has a pet fee of $20 per night (rather than per stay) which isn’t too bad. We find that a lot of hotels don’t end up charging pet fees even though they know we have a dog with us, so hopefully they don’t charge us for having Truffles with us as that’ll save us $60 because I booked us in there for three nights.

Our RAGBRAI Accommodation Costs

I expected RAGBRAI to be quite costly on the accommodation front if we weren’t able to book hotels and/or Airbnbs as soon as the 2022 route was announced. By booking most of our stays within an hour or two of the route being announced, we were not only able to lock in low prices but also rooms in hotels that in some cases have since sold out.

Here’s a quick recap of how much each night is costing us:

• July 23 – Sergeant Bluff – 12,000 Marriott Bonvoy points
• July 24 – Ida Grove – 12,000 Marriott Bonvoy points
• July 25 – Pocahontas – $79.74
• July 26 – Emmetsburg – $79.74
• July 27 – Mason City – 14,400 IHG Rewards points
• July 28 – Charles City – 14,400 IHG Rewards points
• July 29 – West Union – 30,000 Radisson Rewards points
• July 30 – Lansing – 30,000 Radisson Rewards points

We’ll also potentially have $165 to pay in pet fees. That, funnily enough, is more than our cash outlay for hotels during RAGBRAI seeing as most of our stays were booked using hotel points!

In case you’re wondering how we came about all our hotel points, check out this post where I detailed how we accumulated so many points before our 50 state road trip.